watching horror movies since 1974

Oh my lord, what happened to October? One day I was settling in to watch my first Hammer film of the month, and the next, I was putting away the skeleton garlands. The good news is that I did make it. I watched a horror film every day of October, and thoroughly enjoyed myself. Not that it was a cake walk, no indeed. With my twelve credit hours and my, well, life, needing lots of attention, fitting in a film was not always a priority, or even something I really wanted to do. But I became an expert this month at forcing myself to watch stuff. A good skill to have.
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Don’t worry! The experiment is still going strong (although it came close to ending last night when I looked up from my laptop and realized it was 11:35pm and no movie…). I am swamped in schoolwork and a difficult day or two, but the movies march on.

Reviews are forthcoming.

In the meantime…
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Seattle was so nice. See how relaxed I look?

that’s not going to last.

…well, it’s not actually.

But heck, it sort of feels like it. I’m taking just two courses this summer, both what my program calls an FDIS, or Faculty Designed Independent Study. One study is on Chicago authors and the other is about issues facing women in prison. Cheery, yes.

I love FDIS courses. I’ve done two others now – one was back in the winter of 2006, for which I wrote a mammoth paper comparing the three versions of King Kong. The other involved writing and designing a newsletter. Both experiences were a lot of work, but also very freeing. In my old age, I’ve come to really relish working at my own pace, and without instruction or interruption. I’m a loner, Dottie, a rebel.

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So yeah, new digs.

Finding time to work on this in between ever-increasing piles of schoolwork, home life, and various dog duties has been a challenge. And today I finally, finally had a bunch of hours in a row to spend knocking down the Big Barriers to going live. And here we are.

A word about the tech stuff.
So, naturally I’m doing all of this with my Mac Mini, with it’s big fat gig and SupaDrive. I love that little box. It’s one of the best things that has ever happened to me.

The platform for the blog itself is WordPress 2.1.3, highly modular and tweakable. OMG themes! OMG widgets! After coding everything by hand in Moveable Type at the old blog, WP is like the slickiest slicky to ever slick.

Along the way, I’ve been assisted by Smultron, a great text editor with a name like one of the Council of Doom, Fetch, the cutest ftp client I could find, the thematic stylings of Frisky Wife, a bunch of good people who wrote super fun widgets, The Electric Company Vol 2., Rose Smith, and a fresh batch of crystal meth.

I’m probably kidding about that last one.

And, of course, I could not have gotten half this far without the help of The Captain. You’re my favorite.

There are still many things I want to tweak and adjust and add and update, but I’m happy to finally show you what I’ve got. All the old stuff is here, with some new pages and features, like the Library of Mirth.

The old site will go away very soon. I’ll miss it, and I’m proud of it. Funny how life keeps moving along.